Paula Poundstone Quotes and Jokes

I was diagnosed a number of years ago with obsessive-compulsive disorder - which everyone has, to some degree - and I have this really annoying trait where in conversation, I always steer it back to something that happened to me.

Inside the Pop-Tarts Box there are three pouches of two. This is what happens to me: I open the first pouch, and I eat one tart, and I enjoy it very much, as naturally I would. And then I feel, “Well, I have to eat the second one or it will go stale.” Well, now I’ve eaten two, and it’s no longer just a snack, it’s a meal. I figure I may as well eat two more. And then finally I’m just like, “Well hell, I don’t just want two pop tarts hangin’ out in a box.” I eat the last two just to tidy up, really.

My mom is one of those really angry moms who gets mad at absolutely everything. Once when I was a little kid, I accidentally knocked a Flintstones glass off the kitchen table. She said, ‘Well, dammit, we can’t have nice things.’

Hell yeah, I still wear zoot suits on stage!!! I don’t care that they went out of style in the 30s and that I went out of style in the 80s. Look at it like this: You know how Gallagher smashes watermelons and Larry the Cable Guy says ‘Get Er Done’ and Bill Hicks deconstructs society and enlightens people with the truth in a deeply hilarious way? Well, I wear horrendous looking outfits on stage. That’s my thing. And, dare I say, it’s worked out pretty damn well for me. Everybody in the world used to know who I was twenty five years ago. And that’s due in large part to the dalmatian neckties and the piano key neckties I would wear. Neck wear actually made me a legend! How many people can say that or would even want to say that? Not many. Tucker Carlson, maybe…

It's funny that we think of libraries as quiet demure places where we are shushed by dusty, bun-balancing, bespectacled women. The truth is libraries are raucous clubhouses for free speech, controversy and community. Librarians have stood up to the Patriot Act, sat down with noisy toddlers and reached out to illiterate adults. Libraries can never be shushed.

It is my wish to die of unique causes, perhaps in a high-speed tricycle crash, a bizarre stapling incident, or as a result of inadvertently sucking my brains out through my ear while trying to untwist the vacuum hose.